As concerns of a global hunger crisis mount, researchers at the University of Washington, Seattle, have launched a new program on IBM’s World Community Grid to develop stronger strains of rice that could produce crops with larger, more nutritious yields and greater resistance to changing weather patterns.

Jumpstarted by a $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the “Nutritious Rice for the World” program will harness over 160 teraflops of the grid’s volunteer-donated processing power to study rice at the atomic level. Researchers expect the results to transfer to other cereal crops such as corn, wheat, and barley and to have a major impact on global health.

Branching through your brain, a complex system of arteries, capillaries and veins feeds the organ that allows you to think. While the shape of each person’s network is similar in the basics to everyone else’s, it is unique in the particulars.

A new type of three-dimensional imaging and processing tool, based upon grid-computing, stands ready to change the way doctors perform neurosurgery.